RIP Soupy Sales

The man they call Soupy has gone to the great beyond. From the NYT obit:

Soupy Sales, whose zany television routines turned the smashing of a pie to the face into a madcap art form, died Thursday night. He was 83.

Some 20,000 pies were hurled at Soupy Sales or at visitors to his TV shows in the 1950s and ’60s, by his own count. The victims included Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, all of whom turned up just for the honor of being creamed.

[I]n 1965, a disgruntled Sales ended his New Year's Day broadcast of The Soupy Sales Show by instructing his young audience to creep into their parents' bedrooms, take their parents' "funny green pieces of paper with pictures of U.S. presidents," and mail the paper to him. When money started arriving at the studio, Sales explained he was only joking and either returned the dough or donated the unreturnables to charity.